


Peace, Angel of Death, I Will Protect You

by CinnamonrollStark



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Anxiety, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Depression, Doctor Peter Parker, Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Medical, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Peter Parker, References to Depression, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnamonrollStark/pseuds/CinnamonrollStark
Summary: Oncologist Peter Parker knows that his specific line of work is a little... morally complicated. If any of the staff at the hospital found out what he was doing, he'd probably get arrested. But he's okay with what it is, because he knows he brings people peace.That would be simple enough were it not for the return of his mentor and father figure, twelve years presumed dead.





	Peace, Angel of Death, I Will Protect You

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this one is a little... out there, I guess? I started writing it yesterday and I was honest to God impressed with myself. I'm a huge medical show fan, like, a big fan of the resident- as well as Mary Kills People. And obviously marvel haha. So, here we go- a little smattering of things. Hope you like it!!!

Most people had an idea of what they were meant to become when approaching adulthood. A career bloodline, injected straight into the veins of the new generation; to be lost in the midst of your own future had become a misplaced commonality, a misfit of normalcy. To grow up meant to get a handle on what you were intended to be. For Peter, it was not so simple.

As a child, dreams and inspiration came easy, as it commonly is for the young mind. Imagination was his greatest asset, and to start forward on a path to destiny was not complicated back then. But as time passed, destiny became crowded and confusing. When he was young, Peter could try on outfits of the future and see himself twenty years in, filling the suit as he was meant to. But sooner or later, that suit was crafted in Iron, and the man inside of it left it empty in the effort to save those that he donned it for. That suit in particular, one that in his youth, Peter effortlessly imagined himself in, left large footprints in its path, and Peter's shoes could never fill that cavity.

So, he devoted most of his teenaged years to living up to the legacy left for him, filling the space that he could in the best way he knew how. Webs and red and blue and black. Veiws from skyscrapers and rooftops, with little fear and careful concentration.

Of course, Tony was there is his own way. Graffiti tributes to the billionaire decorated the city, mourners who weeped for his loss years after he crucified himself for the sake of the living and the dead. Some days, Peter would stop before the cartoonish paintings, running his fingers across the black-white arc reactors, holding his breath and waiting to feel the heat and the heaving of a heartbeat. It wasn't enough, it never was. Distractions and coping mechanisms were temporary fixes to lifelong problems. Seventeen years old, and Peter had no real life. To simply manage was not to live.

It had been twelve years, seven months, and eleven days. Peter had counted, a ticking clock that lodged itself somewhere deep between his sternum and his heart. As each day passed, that clock got bigger, and left less and less room to breath around. As he pulled on his scrubs that morning, he was suprised the thick material could fit around the thing. Hair, thick and wild. He tried his best to brush it down. 

Doctors were usually expected to wear lab coats, as a standard of practice. Peter didn't really give a shit about expectations. It wasn't like he did not have one- he did, and it hung behind some clutter in his bedroom closet. He just felt better blended in, a nurse with a couple extra years of education. So, as per ritual, he left the thing hanging softly in the dark room. 

The weight of the stethoscope around his neck had become such a common sensation that without it, he felt bare. On the Metro to work, Peter smiled at the woman and the child across from him. 

"You a nurse?" She asked, rocking the toddler on her knee.

"Oncologist."

The woman smiled, and the toddler stuck his whole fist in his mouth.

"Fancy. Presbyterian?"

"Yep."

The train scurried under a tunnel, dark black walls dimming the interior. The woman went back to playing with her child. Peter stuck the nubs of the stethoscope in his ears and pressed the diaphragm to the left of his sternum, listening as the swish-thudd of his heart swelled around the contraption.

Sometimes it was nice to remember he was still here, still alive.

○○○●●●○○○

Julia was an eleven year old girl with a particularly nasty medullablastoma. Despite Peter and Julia's medical team's best efforts, the bugger continued to spread. Stage 4, embedded in many places throughout her body. Peter sat in a chair next to her bed, where the girl and her mother lay.

The mother, Sophie, ran her fingers over Julia's bare temples and smiled down at her. The father was fetching a few toys and blankets from the car.

"I thought you liked green jello better?"

Julia licked the spoon her hand, the clear tub of jiggly desert sitting between her knees. "Red tastes better coming up."

Sophie laughed. "Ew."

"She's right," said Peter, brushing his hair back. "But frankly neither taste good to me."

"You don't like jello?" Julie asked, shocked. Peter shrugged.

"I'm more of a pudding guy."

Julie shook her head. "You're crazy." Her shaved blonde head glinted a bit from the overhead light.

"So Julie, you've really thought this through?"

The little girl stopped eating and sighed. For such a young girl, she showed such a surplus of maturity. A contemplation of life- in that look alone, Peter had his answer.

"I think so."

Sophie squeezed her shoulder. "We've been talking a lot about it." Her eyes, so gently neutral, a feat which must have taken quite a bit of practice and concentration.

"She really feels that she's ready."

Peter caught her eyes and wanted to ask the question, but couldn't face it. Of course this mother is not ready yet. A confliction, of course. Another addition of moral confusion.

"So you understand what is going to happen?"

Julia licked at her spoon and smiled, a look of peace about her. "We're gonna watch the princess diaries, and eat some ice cream. And then I'm going to fall asleep."

Peter swallowed past the lump in his throat.

"And I'll meet jesus."

A tear fell from the mother's eye, and she wiped it calmly, so as not for the girl to notice. A force of brutally silent nature, the eye of the tornado swallowing the storm whole.

Julia looked up at her mother and smiled. God, how hollow her cheeks had become. Skin like wet paper, so thin that Peter could make out the blood vessels in her face. Sophie placed a hand on the shaved head and ran it across the velvet surface. "That's right."

Emotion peeled around the edges of Peter's throat, and he managed a smile. "Okay then. I think we can get started, now."

○○○●●●○○○

To inject pentobarbital into a child's portocath took a good deal of mental processing. It was peaceful, as it always was. Credits rolling after the Anne Hathaway movie, an empty icecream container on the nightstand by the bed.

A mother, draped over her child's stomach, holding her hand, stifling her sobs into the soft fabric of Julia's favorite onesie. A father, who sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his wife and his daughter against his chest.

This was, as usual, too much for Peter to watch. But it brought him comfort to know that he'd helped a family when no one else would. People like Julia deserved a choice. To watch her suffer, and furthermore, to prolong such, was far worse a crime than to end it. Of course, many others would never see it this way.

A colleague and friend of Peter's, nurse Wendy Bently, took his arm as he left work that day, and squeezed him gently.

"I heard about the kid. You doing okay?"

Peter nodded, remaining composed as best he could. "Yeah, I'm good. Just a hard day."

She let him go, a soft graze of the thumb across the bare skin of his bicep. "You get some sleep, okay? You look like shit."

Peter almost laughed. "Yeah, I know. See you tomorrow."

And as he left, the nearly full bottle of euthanasia shifted in the pocket of his scrubs. It was heavy, but not in physical weight. 

After a night like this, Peter usually escaped to his car to have a good cry. It was a fairly common occurance, and it helped him to not break down at work, in front of patients or otherwise. Unfortunately, he'd made the mistake of taking the train, and had to hold off an extra half hour. His chest constricted around the clock, around the time of death, around the loss. Maybe he surrounded himself with death in order to get it out of the way- Peter would always lose someone important to him, so why not make some money doing it?

But Peter didn't help people die for the sake of money. He knew what it was like to sit in a body, despised from the inside out, heart heavy and mind broken. Peter wasn't allowed to die, himself, a fact he'd found out the hard way. Too many people relied on him. But to help others cross over, that was a different story.

Peter stood at the sidewalk,  now, and closed his eyes. It was late, blue, star-spattered light illuminating the crescents under his eyes. Summer wind lifted his curls and brushed through his lashes. It had rained, and the smell of wet pavement filled his nose. He didn't truly feel the energy, to walk all the way to the metro. 

A flood of memories, of his losses- they always came about this time of night. His heart thudded at the recollection of soft light reflected of Julia's portacath, an echo of an arc reactor. How he did not need to rely on the monitor to know when her heart had stopped, because he'd heard the organ slow and finally cease its rhythmic movements. 

Peter remembered the same for Tony. How that heart, so dear to him, had shut down. How empty that silence was, far beyond the shell of a suit. How the light dimmed and eventually burned out.

Peter took in a shaky breath to ward of the tears, and heard carefully quiet footsteps patter up behind him.

"Hey kiddo," the voice, so wonderfully familiar, uttered in the dark. Peter did not need to turn to recognize it's owner, but he did, anyway.

"You're all grown up."

 

**Author's Note:**

> More will come in a bit. I have camp next week so it might be a week or so, but itll come haha!


End file.
